ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD

--- type: slide slideOptions: controls: false help: false slideNumber: false ---  <style> .present { color: yellow; text-align: Center; padding: 0 2rem; } .present h2 { font-size: 80%; text-transform: uppercase; color: yellow; opacity: 0.7; } </style>  --- --- ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD by Tom Stoppard --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Heads. --- Heads. Heads. --- Heads. Heads. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: There is an art to the building up of suspense. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Heads. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Though it can be done by luck alone. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Heads. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: If that’s the word I’m after. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Seventy-six – love. Heads. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: A weaker man might be moved to reexamine his faith, if in nothing else at least in the law of probability. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Heads. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: The law of probability, it has been oddly asserted, is something to do with the proposition that if six monkeys – if six monkeys were … --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Game? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Were they? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Are you? --- Game. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: The law of averages, if I have got this right, means that if six monkeys were thrown up in the air for long enough, --- they would land on their tails about as often as they would land on their – --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Heads. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Which even at first glance does not strike one as a particularly rewarding speculation, in either sense, even without the monkeys. --- I mean you wouldn’t bet on it. --- I mean I would, but you wouldn’t … --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Heads. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Would you? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Heads. Heads. Getting a bit of a bore, isn’t it? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: A bore? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Well… --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What about the suspense? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What suspense? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: It must be the law of diminishing returns… I feel the spell about to be broken. --- Well, it was an even chance… if my calculations are correct. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Eighty-five in a row – beaten the record! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Don’t be absurd. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Easily! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Is that it, then? --- Is that all? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: A new record? --- Is that as far as you are willing to go? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Well… --- ## GUILDENSTERN: No questions? --- Not even a pause? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: It’ll take some beating, I imagine. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Is that what you imagine? --- Is that it? --- No fear? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Fear? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Fear! The crack that might flood your brain with light. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Heads I’m afraid – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: So am I. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I’m afraid it's not your day. [whishing sound and low beat] --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I’m afraid it is. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Eighty-nine. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: It must be indicative of something, besides the redistribution of wealth. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Heads. --- I’ve never known anything like it! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Syllogism: One, he has never known anything like it. --- Two, he has never known anything to write home about. --- Three, it is nothing to write home about…Home…What’s the first thing you remember? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Oh, let’s see…The first thing that comes into my head, you mean? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: No – the first thing you remember. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Ah. No, it’s no good, it’s gone. --- It was a long time ago. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I don't think you get my meaning. --- What is the first thing after all the things you’ve forgotten? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Oh, I see. I’ve forgotten the question. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Are you happy? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Content? --- At ease? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I think so. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What are you going to do now? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I don’t know. --- What do you want to do? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I have no desires. --- None. That’s right, a messenger --- We were sent for. [whishing sound and low beat] Syllogism the second: One, probability is a factor which operates within natural forces. --- Two, probability is not operating as a factor. --- Three, we are now held within un-, sub- or supernatural forces. --- Discuss. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I’m sorry I – What’s the matter with you? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: The scientific approach to the examination of phenomena is a defense against the pure emotion of fear. --- Keep tight hold and continue while there’s time. --- Now – counter to the previous syllogism: tricky one, follow me closely, it may prove a comfort. --- If we postulate, and we just have, that within un-, sub- or supernatural forces the probability is that the law of probability will not operate as a factor, --- then we must accept that the probability of the first part will not operate as a factor, in which case the law of probability will operate as a factor within un-, sub- or supernatural forces after. And since it obviously hasn't been doing so, we can take it that we are not held within un-, sub- or supernatural forces at all; in all probability, that is. --- Which is a great relief to me personally. Which is all very well and good, except that – We were sent for. A messenger arrived. --- Nothing else happened. --- Ninety-two coins spun consecutively have come down heads ninety-two consecutive times… --- and for the last three minutes on the wind of a windless day I have heard the sound of drums and flute… --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Another curious scientific phenomenon is the fact that the fingernails grow after death, as does the beard. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Beard! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: But you’re not dead. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I didn’t say they started to grow after death! The fingernails also grow before birth, though not the beard. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Beard! --- What’s the matter with you? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What is the first thing you remember today? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I woke up, I suppose. Oh – I’ve got it now – that man, a stranger, he woke us up – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: A messenger. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: That’s it – pale sky before dawn, a man standing on his saddle to bang on the shutters – shouts – “What’s all the row about? Clear off!” --- But then he called our names. --- You remember that – this man woke us up. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Yes. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: We were sent for. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Yes. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: That’s why we’re here. Travelling. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Practically starting from scratch… A man standing on his saddle to bang on the shutters, our names called out in a certain dawn, A new record for heads and tails. --- We have not been…picked out…simply to be abandoned…set loose to find our own way… We are entitled to some direction… I would have thought. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: [rumbling with intermittent piano keying] I say –! --- I say –! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Yes? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I hear – I thought I heard – music. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Yes? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Like a band. I thought I heard a band. --- Drums. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Yes. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: It couldn’t have been real. It must have been thunder. --- Like drums… [synchronized humming and intensified piano] --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I knew all along it was a band. Here they come! --- ## PLAYER: Halt! An audience! --- Don’t you move! --- Perfect! --- Well met, in fact, and just in time. --- Why we grow rusty, and you catch us at the very point of decadence – by this time tomorrow we might have forgotten everything we ever knew. --- We are at your command. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: My name is Guildenstern, and this is Rosencrantz. I’m sorry – his name’s Guildenstern, and I’m Rosencrantz. --- ## PLAYER: A pleasure. --- I recognized you at once – --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: And who are we? --- ## PLAYER: – as fellow artists. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I thought we were gentlemen. --- What is your line? --- ## PLAYER: Tragedy, sir. --- Deaths and disclosures, both universal and particular, denouements both unexplainable and inexorable. --- We transport you into a world of intrigue and illusion… set pieces in the poetic vein. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Well, I don’t know… --- ## PLAYER: You can get caught up in the action if that’s your taste. --- What precisely is your pleasure? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What do they do? --- ## PLAYER: Let your imagination run riot. --- They are beyond surprise. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: It was chance, then? --- ## PLAYER: Chance? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You found us. --- ## PLAYER: Oh, yes. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You were looking? --- ## PLAYER: Oh, no. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Chance, then. --- ## PLAYER: Or fate. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Yours or ours? --- ## PLAYER: It's hardly be one without the other. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Fate then. --- ## PLAYER: Oh, yes --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You said something – about getting caught up in the action – --- ## PLAYER: I did! --- I did! --- You’re quicker than your friend… Now I happen to have a private and uncut performance of a tragedy that might interest you and you can participate. --- Taking either part - Or both - With encores --- ## GUILDENSTERN: It could be – it didn’t have to be … It could be – a bird out of season, dropping bright-feathered on my shoulder… --- It could have been a tongueless gnome standing by the road to point the way… I think I'm more interested in that. --- ## PLAYER: Okay. Onward --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Excuse me! --- ## PLAYER: Halt. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: You’re not exclusively players, then? --- ## PLAYER: We’re inclusively players, sir. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: So, you give –? --- ## PLAYER: Performances, sir. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Yes, of course. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I mean, I’ve heard of – but I’ve never actually – --- ## PLAYER: No – --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I mean, what exactly do you do? --- ## PLAYER: We do the usual stuff, more or less, only inside out. --- We do on stage what is supposed to happen off. --- Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Well, I’m not really the type of man who – Well, all right – I wouldn’t mind seeing – just an idea of the kind of – What will you do for that? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Do you like a bet? --- ## PLAYER: What kind of bet did you have in mind? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Double or quits. --- ## PLAYER: Well … heads. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Again? Heads. --- Again. --- ## PLAYER: Tails. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Oh, Heads. Heads. I win. --- ## PLAYER: Sure. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You were right. Heads I win --- ## PLAYER: Sure. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Right again. Heads. I win --- ## PLAYER: We have no money. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Well then what do you have? --- ## PLAYER: We are the best at tragedy. [echoing gong sound] --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Do you know any good classic plays? --- ## PLAYER: Plays? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I thought you said you were actors. --- ## PLAYER: Oh. --- Oh, we are. --- We are. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Well then – one of the Greeks, perhaps? --- You’re familiar with the tragedies of antiquity, are you? --- The great homicidal classics? --- Matri, patri, fratri, sorori, uxori and it goes without saying - Suicidal – hm? --- Maidens aspiring to godheads – --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: And vice versa – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Your kind of thing, is it? --- ## PLAYER: Well, no actually it's not, I can’t say it is. --- We’re more of the blood, love, and rhetoric school. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Well, I’ll leave the choice to you, if there is anything to choose between them. --- ## PLAYER: They’re hardly divisible, sir – well, I can give you blood and love without the rhetoric, I can give you blood and rhetoric without the love, --- and I can give you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can’t give you love and rhetoric without the blood. --- Blood is compulsory – it's all blood, you see. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Is that what people want? --- ## PLAYER: That is what we do. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Okay --- ## PLAYER: Entrances center stage. [high pitched ringing followed by drumming and clapping] --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You put on a costume? --- ## PLAYER: I never change out of it, sir. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Always in character. --- ## PLAYER: Yes sir --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Aren’t you going to – come on? --- ## PLAYER: I am on. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: But if you are on, you can’t come on. --- Can you? --- ## PLAYER: I start on. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: But it hasn't started yet. Go on, we'll look after you. --- ## PLAYER: I’ll give you a wave. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I say – that was lucky. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: It was tails. [loud sound of movement, as if hurtling through space rapidly] --- [mystical piano keying] --- ## PLAYER: And with his head over his shoulder turned, Hamlet seemed to find his way without his eyes. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Let's go [loud, mystical humming sound] --- ## CLAUDIUS: Welcome, dear Rosencrantz … And Guildenstern. Moreover, that we did much long to see you, The need we have to use you did provoke Our hasty sending. --- Something have you heard Of Hamlet’s transformation, so call it, Sith nor th’exterior nor the inward man Resembles what it was. --- What it should be, More than his father’s death, that thus hath put him, So much from th’understanding of himself, I cannot dream of. --- I entreat you both That, being of so young days brought up with him And sith so neighbored to his youth and haviour That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court --- Some little time, so by your companies To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather --- So much as from occasion you may glean, Whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus, That opened lies within our remedy. --- ## GERTRUDE: Good Gentleman … He hath much talked of you, And sure I am, two men there is not living To whom he more adheres. --- If it will please you expand your time with us awhile, your visitation shall receive such thanks as fits a king’s remembrance. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Both your majesties might, by the sovereign power you have of us, put your dread pleasures more into command Than to entreaty. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: But we both obey, and here give up ourselves in the full bent to lay our service freely at your feet, to be commanded. --- ## CLAUDIUS: Thanks, Rosencrantz. And gentle Guildenstern. --- ## GERTRUDE: Thanks, Guildenstern …and gentle Rosencrantz. --- And I beseech you both instantly to visit my too much changed son. --- Go, some of you, and bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Heaven make our presence and our practices Pleasant and helpful to him. --- ## GERTRUDE: Ay, amen! --- ## POLONIUS: The ambassadors from Norway, my good lord, are joyfully returned. --- ## CLAUDIUS: Thou still hast been the father of good news. --- ## POLONIUS: Have I, my lord? --- I Assure you, my good liege, I hold my duty as I hold my soul, --- Both to my God and my gracious King; And I do think, or else this brain of mine --- Hunts not the trail of policy so sure As it hath used to do, that I have found The very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy … [mystical ringing] --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I want to go home. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Don’t let them confuse you. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I’m out of step here – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: We’ll soon be home and high – dry and home --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: It’s all over my depth – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I’ll tie you home and – --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: – out of my head – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: dry you high and – --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: over my step over my head body! --- I tell you it’s all stopping to a death, it’s boding to a depth, stepping to a head, it’s all heading to a dead stop – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: There! --- …and we’ll soon be home and dry … high and dry … --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I remember – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Yes? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I remember when there were no questions. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: There were always questions. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Answers, yes. --- There were answers to everything. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You’ve forgotten. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I haven’t forgotten – how I used to remember my own name – and yours, oh yes! --- There were answers everywhere you looked. --- There was no question about it – people knew who I was and if they didn’t, they asked me and I told them. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: A man standing on his saddle in the half-lit half-alive morning banged on the shutters and called two names. --- He was just a head and a cloak levitating in the grey plume of his own breath, but when he called, we came. --- That much is certain – we came. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Well, I can tell you I’m sick to death of it. --- You made me look ridiculous just now. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I looked just as ridiculous as you did. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I want to go home. Which way did we come in? --- I’ve lost my sense of direction. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: The only beginning is birth, and the only end is death – if you can’t count on that, what can you count on? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN: We don’t owe anything to anyone. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: We’ve been caught up. --- Your smallest action sets off another somewhere else and is set off by it. --- Keep an eye open, and ear cocked. --- Tread warily, follow instructions. --- We’ll be all right. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What have we got to go on? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: We have been briefed. --- Hamlet’s transformation. --- What do you recollect? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Well, he’s changed, hasn’t he? --- The inward and the exterior man fails to resemble – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Draw him on to pleasures – glean what afflicts him. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Something more than his father’s death – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: He’s always talking about us – there aren’t two people living whom he dotes on more than us. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: We cheer him up – find out what’s the matter – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Exactly, it’s a matter of asking the right questions and giving away as little as we can. --- It’s a game. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: And then we can go? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: And receive such thanks as fits a king’s remembrance. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I like the sound of that. --- What do you think he means by remembrance? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: He doesn’t forget his friends. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Would you care to estimate? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Difficult to say, really – some kings tend to be amnesiac, others I suppose – the opposite, whatever that is … --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Yes – but – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Retentive – he’s a very retentive king, a royal retainer … --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What are you playing at? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Words, word, words. [soft piano music] --- They’re all we have to go on. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Shouldn’t we be doing something – constructive? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What did you have in mind? A short, blunt human pyramid? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: We could go. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Where? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: After him. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Why? --- They’ve got us placed now – if we start moving around, we’ll all be chasing each other all night. [sound of lights being shut off] --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Oh, How very intriguing! I feel like a spectator – It's an appalling business. --- The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute… --- ## GUILDENSTERN: See anyone? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Ahh, No. --- You? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: No. What a fine persecution – to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened… [lights are loudly turned back on, xylophone plays] We’ve had no practice. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: We could play at questions. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What good would that do? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Practice! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Statement! --- One – love. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: That's cheating! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: How? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I hadn’t started yet. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Statement. --- Two – love. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Are you counting that? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Are you counting that? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Foul! --- No repetitions. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I’m not going to play if you’re going to be like that. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Whose serve? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Hah? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Foul! --- No grunts. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Whose go? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Why? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Why not? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What for? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Foul! --- No synonyms! One – all. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What in God’s name is going on? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Foul! --- No rhetoric. --- Two – one. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What does it all add up to? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Can’t you guess? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Were you addressing me? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Is there anyone else? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Who? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: How would I know? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Why do you ask? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Are you serious? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Was that rhetoric? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: No. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Statement! --- Two – all. --- Game point. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What’s the matter with you today? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: When? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Are you deaf? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Am I dead? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Yes, or no? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Is there a choice? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Is there a God? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Foul! --- No non sequiturs, three – two, one game all. --- ## PLAYER: Take a break, take a break. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What’s your name? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What’s yours? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I asked you first. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Statement. --- One – love. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What’s your name when you’re at home? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What’s yours? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: When I’m at home? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Is it different at home? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What home? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Haven’t you got one? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Why do you ask? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What are you driving at? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What’s your name?! --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Repetition! --- Two – love. --- Match point to me. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Rhetoric! --- Game and match! --- Where’s it going to end? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: That’s the question. [mystical piano music] --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Who was that? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Don't you know him? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: He didn’t know me. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I hardly knew him, he’s changed. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: You could see that? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Transformed. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: How do you know? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Inside and out. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I see. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: He’s not himself. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: He’s changed. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I could see that. Glean what afflicts him. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Me? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Him. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: How? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Question and answer. --- Old ways are the best ways. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: He’s afflicted. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You question, I’ll answer. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: He’s not himself, you know. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I’m him, you see. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Who am I then? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You’re yourself. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: And he’s you? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: No, not a bit of it. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Are you afflicted? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: That’s the idea. --- Are you ready? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Let’s go back a bit. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I’m afflicted. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Right. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: So glean what afflicts me. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I see. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Question and answer. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: How should I begin? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Address me. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: My dear Guildenstern! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You’ve forgotten – haven’t you? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: My dear Rosencrantz! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I don’t think you understand. --- What we are attempting is a hypothesis where I answer for him, while you ask me questions. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Ah! --- Ready? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Yes you know what to do? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Are you stupid? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Pardon? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Are you deaf? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Did you speak? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Not now – --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Statement. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Not now! --- Perhaps he’ll come back this way. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Should we go? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Why? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Oh! --- You mean – you pretend to be him, and I ask you questions! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Very good. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: You had me confused. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I could see I had. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: How should I begin? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Address me. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Ohh, my honored lord! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: My dear Rosencrantz! --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Am I pretending to be you, then? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Certainly not. --- If you like. --- Shall we continue? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Question and answer. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Yes. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Right. --- My honored lord! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: My dear fellow! --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: How are you? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Afflicted! --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Really? --- In what way? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Transformed. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Inside or out? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Both. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I see. Not much new there. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Go into details. --- Delve. --- Probe the background, establish the situation. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: So – so your uncle is the king of Denmark?! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: And my father before him. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: But surely – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You might well ask. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Let me get it straight. --- Your father was king. --- You were his only son. --- Your father dies. --- You are of age. --- Your uncle becomes king. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Yes. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Unorthodox. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Undid me. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Undeniable. --- Where were you? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: In Germany. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Usurpation, then. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: He slipped in. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Which reminds me. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Well, it would. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I don’t want to be personal. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: It’s common knowledge. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Your mother’s marriage. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: He slipped in. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: His body was still warm. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: So was hers. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Extraordinary. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Indecent. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Hasty. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Suspicious. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: It makes you think. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Don’t think I haven’t thought of it. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: And with her husband’s brother. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: They were close. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: She went to him – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Too close– --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: for comfort. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: It looks bad. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: It adds up. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Incest to adultery. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Would you go so far? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Never. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: [soft harmonic humming] To sum up: your father, whom you love, dies, you are his heir, you come back to find that hardly was the corpse cold before his young brother popped into his throne and into his sheets, thereby offending both legal and natural practice. --- Now why are you behaving in this extraordinary manner? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: This is common property, well known. --- Yet he did send for us. --- And we did come. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I say! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: We’re here. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I say! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Rosencrantz… --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Guildenstern… --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Don’t you discriminate at all? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Go and see if he’s there. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Who? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: There. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Yes. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What is he doing? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Talking. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: To himself? --- Is he alone? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: No. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Then he’s not talking to himself, is he? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Not by himself … Coming this way, I think. Should we go? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Why? --- We’re marked now. --- ## HAMLET: … for you yourself, sir, should be as old as I am if like a crab you could go backward. --- ## POLONIUS: Though this be madness, yet there is method in it. --- My good Lord, will you walk out of the air? --- ## HAMLET: Into my grave. --- ## POLONIUS: Indeed, that’s out of the air. My lord, I will take my leave of you. --- ## HAMLET: You cannot take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal – except my life, except my life, except my life … --- ## POLONIUS: Fare you well, my lord. You go to seek Lord Hamlet? --- There he is. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: God save you, sir. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: My honored lord! --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: My most dear lord! --- ## HAMLET: My excellent good friends! --- How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do you both? [loud, deep thumping] --- ## HAMLET: What piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, s’blood, there is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out. --- ## HAMLET: Gentleman, you are welcome to Elsinore. --- Your hands, come then. --- You are welcome. But my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: In what, my lord? --- ## HAMLET: I am but mad north north-west; when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw. --- ## POLONIUS: Well, be with you, gentleman. --- ## HAMLET: Hark you, Guildenstern And you too; at each ear a hearer. --- That great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling-clouts… --- ## POLONIUS: My good Lord! --- I have news to tell you. --- ## HAMLET: My good lord, I have news to tell you …When Roscius was an actor in Rome… --- ## POLONIUS: The actors have come hither. --- ## HAMLET: Buzz, buzz. [deep, buzzing noise] --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Hm? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Yes? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I thought you … --- ## GUILDENSTERN: No. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Ah. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I think we can say we made some headway. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: You think so? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I think we can say that. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I think we can say he made us look ridiculous. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: We played it close to the chest of course. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: “Question and answer. Old ways are the best ways!” --- He was scoring off us all down the line. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: He might have caught us on the wrong foot once or twice, perhaps, but I thought we gained some ground. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: He murdered us. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: He might have had the edge. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Twenty-seven to three, and you think he might have had the edge?! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What about our evasions? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Oh, our evasions were lovely. --- “Were you sent for?” he says. --- “My lord, we were sent for …” I didn’t know where to put myself. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: He had six rhetoricals – --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: It was a question and answer, all right. --- Twenty-seven questions he got out in ten minutes and answered three. --- I kept waiting for you to delve. --- “When is he going to start delving?” I asked myself. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: – And two repetitions. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Hardly got a leading question between us. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: We got his symptoms, didn’t we? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn’t mean anything at all. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Thwarted ambition and a sense of grievance, that’s my diagnosis. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Six rhetorical and two repetition, leaving in total nineteen, of which we answered fifteen. --- And what did we get in return? --- He’s depressed?! --- …Denmark’s a prison and he’d rather live in a nutshell; some shadow-play about the nature of ambition, --- which never got down to cases, and finally one direct question which might have led somewhere and led in fact to his illuminating claim to know a hawk from a handsaw. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: When the wind southerly. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Is that southerly? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: It doesn’t look southerly? --- What made you think so? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I didn’t say I think so. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Wait! We came from roughly south according to a rough map. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I see. --- Well, which way did we come in? Roughly. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: In the morning the sun would be easterly. --- I think we can assume that. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: That it’s morning? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: If it is, and the sun is over there … for instance, that – would be northerly. --- On the other hand, if it is not morning and the sun is over there … – then that … would still be northerly. --- To put it another way, if we came from up there… and it is morning, the sun would be up there… and if it is actually up there… --- and it’s still morning, we must have come up from there… and if that is south… --- and the sun is up there… then it’s the afternoon. --- However, if none of these is the case – --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Why don’t you go and have a look? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Empiricism?! --- – is that all you have to offer? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I merely suggest that the sun, if it is out, would give you a rough idea of the time; alternatively, the clock, --- if it is going, would give you a rough idea of the position of the sun. --- I forget which one you’re trying to establish. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I’m trying to establish the direction of the wind. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: There isn’t any wind. --- Draught, yes. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: It’s coming up through the floor. That can’t be south, can it? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: That’s not a direction. --- Lick your toe and wave it around a little bit. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: No, I think you have to lick it for me. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I’m prepared to let the whole matter drop. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Or I could lick yours, of course. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: No thank you. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I’ll even wave it around for you. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What on earth is the matter with you? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Just being friendly. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Someone might come in. --- It’s what we’re counting on. --- Ultimately. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Perhaps they’ve all trampled each other to death in the rush …Give them a shout. --- Something provocative. --- Intrigue them. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Fire! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Where? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: It’s all right – I’m demonstrating the misuse of free speech. --- To prove that it exists. --- Not a move. --- They oughta burn to death in their shoes. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What’s the last thing you remember? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I don’t wish to be reminded of it. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered. --- ## POLONIUS: Come, sirs. [xylophone playing] --- ## HAMLET: Follow him, friends. --- We’ll hear a play tomorrow. Dost, thou hear me, old friend? --- Can you play The Murder of Gonzago? --- ## PLAYER: Ay, my lord. --- ## HAMLET: We’ll ha’t tomorrow night. --- You could for a need study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines that I would set down and insert in’t, could you not? --- ## PLAYER: Ay, my lord. --- ## HAMLET: Very well. --- My good friends, I’ll leave you till tonight. --- You are welcome to Elsinore. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Good, my lord. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: So you’ve caught up. --- ## PLAYER: Not quite, sir. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Who do you have to thank for your performance at the court? --- ## PLAYER: Well, we have an entry here. --- And always have had. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You’ve played for him before? --- ## PLAYER: Yes, sir. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What will you play? --- ## PLAYER: The Murder of Gonzago. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Full of fine cadence and corpses… --- ## PLAYER: Pirated from the Italian… --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What is it about? --- ## PLAYER: A King and Queen… --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Escapism! --- What else? --- ## PLAYER: Blood – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: – Love and rhetoric. --- ## PLAYER: Yes --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Where are you going? --- ## PLAYER: I can come and go as I please. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You’re evidently a man who knows his way around. --- ## PLAYER: Yes, I’ve been here before. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: We’re just finding our feet. --- ## PLAYER: Let's concentrate on not losing your heads. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Do you speak from knowledge. --- ## PLAYER: Precedent. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You’ve been here before. --- ## PLAYER: Ah yes, and I know which way the wind is blowing. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: The truth is, we value your company, for want of any other. --- We have been left so much to our own devices – after a while one welcomes the uncertainty of being left to other people’s. --- ## PLAYER: Uncertainty is the normal state. --- You’re nobody special. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: But for God’s sake what are we supposed to do?! --- ## PLAYER: Relax. --- Respond. --- That’s what normal people do. --- You can’t go around questioning your situation at every turn. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: But we don’t know what’s going on, or what to do with ourselves. --- We don’t know how to act. --- ## PLAYER: Act... natural. --- You know why you’re here at least. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: We only know what they tell us, and that’s little enough. --- And for all we know it isn’t even true. --- ## PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. --- Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. --- It’s the currency of living. --- It may have nothing behind it, but it doesn’t matter so long as it’s honored. --- One acts upon assumptions. --- Now what do you assume? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Hamlet is not himself, outside or in. --- We have to glean what afflicts him. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: He’s – melancholy. --- ## PLAYER: Melancholy? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Mad. --- ## PLAYER: How is he mad? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Ah... How is he mad? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: More morose than mad, perhaps. --- ## PLAYER: Melancholy. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Moody. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: He has moods. --- ## PLAYER: Of moroseness? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Madness. --- And yet. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Quite. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: For instance. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: He talks to himself, which might be madness. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: If he didn’t talk sense, which he does. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Which suggests the opposite. --- ## PLAYER: Of what? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Oh I've got it --- A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense to himself. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Or just as mad. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Or just as mad. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: And he does both. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: So there you have it. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Stark raving sane. --- ## PLAYER: Why? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Ah... Why? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Exactly. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Exactly what? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Exactly why. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Exactly why what? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Why? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Why what, exactly? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Why is he mad?! --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I don’t know! --- ## PLAYER: The old man thinks he’s in love with his daughter. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Good God! --- We’re out of our depth here. --- ## PLAYER: No, no, no – he doesn't have a daughter – the old man thinks he’s in love with his daughter. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: The old man is? --- ## PLAYER: Hamlet, in love with the old man’s daughter, the old man thinks. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Ha! --- It’s beginning to make sense. --- Unrequited passion! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Nobody leaves this room! Without a very good reason. --- ## PLAYER: Why not? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: All this wandering around is getting too arbitrary by half – I’m rapidly losing my grip. --- From now on reason will prevail. --- ## PLAYER: I have lines to learn. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Pass! --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Next! [hollow echoing, as if in a large chamber] --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What did you expect? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Something… everything… someone… anyone… nothing… all at once. --- Do you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: No. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Nor do I, really… It’s silly to be depressed by it. --- I mean one thinks of it like being alive in a box, one keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead…which should make all the difference…shouldn’t it? --- I mean, you’d never know you were dead? --- It would be like being asleep in a box. --- Not that I’d like to sleep in a box, not without any air – you’d wake up dead, for a start, and then where would you be? --- Apart from inside a box. --- That’s the bit I don’t like, frankly. --- That’s why I don’t think about it… Because you’d be helpless, wouldn’t you? --- Stuffed in a box like that, I mean it would go on forever. --- Even taking into account the fact that you’re dead, it's not a pleasant thought. --- Especially if you’re dead, I mean ask yourself, if I asked you right now – I’m going to stuff you in this box right now, would you rather be alive or dead? --- Naturally, you’d prefer to be alive. --- Life in a box is better than no life at all. --- I expect. --- You’d have a chance at least. --- You could lie there thinking – well, at least I’m not dead! --- In a minute somebody's going to come here and bang on the lid and tell me to come out. “Hey you. Whatsyername! Come on out of there!” --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You don’t have to flog it to death! --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I wouldn’t think about it if I were you. --- You’d only get depressed. --- Eternity is a terrible thought. --- I mean, when’s it going to end? --- They don’t care about us. --- We count for nothing. --- We could stay silent till we’re green in the face, they wouldn’t come. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Blue, red. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Hey come on out of there, we know you're in there! --- We have no control. --- None at all… --- Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? --- There must have been one, a moment, in childhood when you first realized that you don’t go on forever. --- It must have been shattering – stamped into one’s memory. --- And yet I can’t remember it. --- It never occurred to me at all. --- What does one make of that? --- We must be born with an intuition of mortality. --- Before we know the words for it, before we know that there are words, out we come, bloodied, --- and squalling with the knowledge that for all the compasses in the world, there’s only one direction, and time is its only measure. --- They’ve taken us for granted! --- Well, I won’t stand for it anymore! --- In future, notice will be taken. Keep out, then! --- I forbid anyone to enter! --- That’s better… --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Death followed by eternity…the worst of both worlds. --- It is a terrible thought. [deep rumbling] --- ## GERTRUDE: Did Hamlet receive you well? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Most like a gentleman. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: But with much forcing of his disposition. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Miserly of question, but of our demands most free in his reply. --- ## GERTRUDE: Did you assay him to any pastime? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Madam, it so fell out that certain players We o’erraught on the way: of these we told him --- And there did seem in him a kind of joy To hear of it. --- They are here about Court, And, as I think, they have already order This night to play before him. --- ## POLONIUS: ‘Tis most true And he beseeched me to entreat your Majesties To hear and see the matter. --- ## CLAUDIUS: With all my heart, and it doth content me To hear him so inclined. --- Good gentleman, give him a further edge And drive his purpose into these delights. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: We shall, my lord. --- ## CLAUDIUS: Sweet Gertrude, leave us, too For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither, --- That he, as t’were by accident, may here Affront Ophelia… --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Never a moment’s peace! --- In an out, on and off, they’re coming at us from all sides. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I’m going. --- He’s coming. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What’s he doing? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Nothing. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: He must be doing something. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Walking. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: On his hands? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: No, on his feet. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Stark naked? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Fully dressed. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Selling toffee apples? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Not that I noticed. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You could be wrong? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I don’t think so. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I can’t for the life of me see how we’re going to get into conversation. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Nevertheless, I suppose one might say that this was a chance…One might well…accost him…Yes, it definitely looks like a chance to me… --- Something on the lines of a direct informal approach…man to man…straight from the shoulder… what’s it all about…sort of thing. --- Yes. --- Yes, definitely looks like one to be grabbed with both hands, I should say…if I were asked…No point in looking at a gift horse till you see the white of its eyes, etcetera. --- We’re overawed, that’s our trouble. --- When it comes to the point, we succumb to their personality… [piano keyed] --- ## HAMLET: Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered. --- ## OPHELIA: Good my lord, how does your honor for this many a day? --- ## HAMLET: I humbly thank you – well, well, well. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: It’s like living in a public park! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Very impressive. --- Yes, I thought your direct informal approach was going to stop this whole thing dead in its tracks there. --- If I might make a suggestion – shut up, sit down. --- Stop being perverse. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I’m not going to stand for it! --- ## PLAYER: Everybody on stage, everyone on stage, everybody. --- Right! --- We haven’t got much time. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What are you doing? --- ## PLAYER: Dress rehearsal. --- Gentlemen, gentlemen if you all could please come here and have a seat, so to be out of the way. --- Alright is everyone ready? --- Alright and please let's remember why we're doing this, here we are. --- Alright, good --- Silence! --- Off we go! --- ## PLAYER-KING: Full thirty times hath Phoebus’ cart – --- ## PLAYER: No, no, no! --- Dumbshow first, you confounded majesty! They’re a bit out of practice, but they make up for it wonderfully for the deaths – it brings out the poetry in them. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: How nice. --- ## PLAYER: Act One – moves now. --- [kissing noise] --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What is the dumbshow for? --- ## PLAYER: It’s a device, really – it makes the action that follows more or less comprehensible; you see, we are tied to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style. --- [screeching noises] --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Who was that? --- ## PLAYER: The King’s brother and uncle to the Prince. --- [mystical piano keying] --- [crying noises replaced by kissing noises] --- ## HAMLET: Go to, I’ll no more on’t; it hath made me mad! I say we will have no more marriage! Those that are married already – --- All but one shall live. The rest shall keep as they are. --- To a nunnery, go. --- [Ophelia singing] --- ## CLAUDIUS: Love? --- His affections do not that way tend nor what he spake, though it lacked form a little, Was not like madness. --- There’s something In his soul o’er which his melancholy sits on --- Brood, and I do doubt the hatch and the Disclose will be some danger; which for to --- Prevent I have in quick determination thus set It down: he shall with speed to England… --- ## PLAYER: Gentlemen, gentlemen! No no no It's not coming along. --- We are not getting it at all. What did you think? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What was I supposed to think? --- ## PLAYER: It's not coming across! --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: That didn’t look like love to me. --- ## PLAYER: Act Two! --- Positions! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Wasn’t that the end? --- ## PLAYER: Do you call that an ending? --- – with practically everyone still on his feet? --- Over your dead body. Look, there’s a design at work in all art – surely you know that? --- Events must play themselves out to aesthetic, moral and logical conclusion. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: And what is that, in this case? --- ## PLAYER: It never varies. We aim to the point where everyone who is marked for death...dies. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Who decides? --- ## PLAYER: Decides? --- It is written. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I want a good story, with a beginning, middle and end. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I’d prefer art to mirror life, if it’s all the same to you. --- ## PLAYER: It’s all the same to me, sir. --- Act two. Next! [xylophone, woodblocks, and violin play] --- Lucianus, nephew to the king! --- usurped by his uncle and shattered by his mother’s incestuous marriage… loses reason… --- staggering from the suicidal --- To the homicidal [shouts of pain] --- The King, tormented by guilt – haunted by fear – decides to dispatch his nephew to England --- and entrusts this undertaking to two friends - gentlemen - spies – [xylophone music continues] --- – giving them a letter to present to the English King! --- And so, they depart – aboard ship – --- ## ENSEMBLE: For England, to England! To England! --- And in a twist of fate and cunning - put in their hands a letter that seals their deaths! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Actors! --- What do you know about death? --- ## PLAYER: It’s what we do best. --- Occasionally, there escapes a thin beam of light that, seen at the proper angle, can crack the very shell of morality. --- Show! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: No, no, no… you’ve got it all wrong… you cannot act death. --- It’s not gasps and blood and falling about – that isn’t what makes death. --- It’s just a man failing to reappear, that’s all – now you see him, now you don’t, an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight until, finally, it is heavy with death. --- ## ENSEMBLE: The King rises! Give o'er the play! [loud static rumbling and whirring] --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: That must be east, then. --- I think we can assume that. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I’m assuming nothing. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Rings a bell. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: They’re waiting to see what we’re going to do. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Good old east. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: As soon as we make a move they’ll come pouring in from every side, shouting obscure instructions, messing us about with ridiculous remarks and getting our names wrong. --- ## CLAUDIUS: Ho, Guildenstern! --- ## ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN: You’re wanted… --- ## CLAUDIUS: Friends both, go join you with some further aid: Hamlet in his madness hath Polonius slain, and from his mother’s closet hath he dragged him. --- Go seek him out; speak fair and bring the body into the chapel. --- I pray your haste in this. Come Gertrude, we’ll call up our wisest friends and let them know both what we mean to do… --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Well… --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Quite… --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Well, well. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Quite, quite. Seek him out. Etcetera. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Quite. --- Seek him out. --- ## ROSENCRANTS He’s coming! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What’s he doing? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Walking. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Alone? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: No. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Who’s with him? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: The old man. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Walking? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: No. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Not walking? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: No. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Ah. [drumming and violin] --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: He was dead. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Of course he’s dead! --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Properly. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Death’s death, isn’t it? --- My lord, what have you done with the dead body? --- ## HAMLET: Compounded it with dust, whereto ‘tis kin. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: My lord you must tell us where the body is and then let us bring it hence to the chapel. --- ## CLAUDIUS: How now? --- What hath befallen? --- ## HAMLET: Do not believe it. --- ## CLAUDIUS: Do not believe what? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Where the body is bestowed, my lord, we cannot get from him. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: My lord you must go with us to the King and then take us to the body. --- ## HAMLET: The body is with the king but the king is not with the body. --- ## CLAUDIUS: But where is he? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Without, my lord; guarded to know your pleasure. --- ## HAMLET: The King is a thing --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: A thing, my lord? --- ## HAMLET and CLAUDIUS: Of nothing, bring me to him. Bring him before us. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: All right then? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: And yet it doesn’t seem enough. --- Can that be all? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: It was a trying episode while it lasted, but I think they’ve done with us now. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Done what? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I don’t pretend to have understood. --- Frankly, I’m not very interested. --- For my part, I’m only glad that that’s the last we’ve seen of him – [soft mystical music] --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I knew it wasn’t the end… --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: My Lord, will you go with me? --- ## HAMLET: I’ll be with you straight. --- Go you a little before. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: We're bringing him to England. --- He said we can go. Swear to God. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I like to know where I am. --- Even if I don’t know where I am, I like to know that. --- If we go there’s no knowing. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: No knowing what? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: If we’ll ever come back. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: We don’t want to come back. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: That may be very well true, but do we want to go? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: We’ll be free. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I don’t know. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: We’ve come this far. And besides, anything could happen yet. [music becomes louder and more adventurous] --- [music begins to rumble and then fades out] --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Are you there? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Where? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: A flying start… --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Is that you? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Yes. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: How do you know? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Oh-for-God’s-sake! --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: We’re not finished, then? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Well, we’re here aren’t we? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Are we? --- I can’t see a thing. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You can still think, can’t you? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I think so. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You can still talk. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What should I say? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Don’t bother. --- You can still feel, can’t you? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Ah haha! --- There’s life in me yet! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What are you feeling? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: A leg. --- Yes, it feels like my leg. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: How does it feel? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Dead. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Dead? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I can’t feel a thing! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Well uh, give it a pinch! --- Ow --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Sorry. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Well, that’s cleared that up. [Pirates hollering offstage] --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: We’re on a boat. Dark, isn’t it? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Not for night. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: No, not for night. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Dark for day. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Nice bit of planking. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Yes, I’m rather fond of boats myself. --- I like the way they’re – contained. --- One doesn't have to worry about which way to go, or whether to go at all – it doesn't come up, because you’re on a boat, aren’t you? --- I think I’ll spend most of my life on boats. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Very healthy. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: One is free on a boat. --- For a time. --- Relatively. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What’s it like? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Rough. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I think I’m going to be sick. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Other side, I think. --- But we are brought round full circle to face the single immutable fact – --- that we, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, bringing a letter from one king to another, are taking Hamlet to England. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I say – he’s there! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What’s he doing? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Sleeping. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: It’s all right for him. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What is? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: He’s got us now. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: He can sleep. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: It’s all done for him. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What now? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What do you mean? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Well, nothing is happening. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: We’re on a boat. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I’m aware of that. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Then what do you expect? --- We act on scraps of information… sifting half-remembered directions we can hardly separate from instinct. --- You had money in both hands. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Yes. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Every time? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Yes. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What’s the point of that? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I wanted to make you happy. --- Oh, what’s going to become of us! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Don’t cry… It’s all right… there… there, I’ll see we’re all right. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: But we’ve got nothing to go on, we’re out on our own. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: We’re on our way to England – we’re taking Hamlet there. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What for? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What for? --- Where have you been? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: When? --- We won’t know what to do when we get there. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: We take him to the King. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Will he be there? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: No – the king of England. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: He’s expecting us? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: No. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: He won’t know what we’re playing at. --- What are we going to say? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: We have a letter. --- You remember the letter. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Do I? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: It's all explained in the letter. --- We count on that. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Is that it, then? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: We take Hamlet to the English King; we hand over the letter – what then? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: There may be something in the letter to keep us going a bit. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: And if not? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Then that’s it – we’re finished. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: At a loose end? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Yes. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Is there likely to be loose ends? --- Who is the English King? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: That depends on when we get there. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What do you think the letter says? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Oh… greetings. --- Expressions of loyalty. --- Diplomacy. --- Regards to the family. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Oh, yes. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: And us – the full background? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I should say so. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: So, we’ve got a letter which explains everything? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You’ve got it. --- What’s the matter? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: The letter. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Have you got it? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Have I? Where would I have put it? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You can’t have lost it. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I must have! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: That’s odd – I thought he gave it to me. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Perhaps he did. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Well you seemed so sure it was you who hadn’t got it. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: It was me who hadn’t got it! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: But if he gave it to me there’s no reason why you should have had it in the first place, in which case I don’t see what all the fuss is about you not having it. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I admit it’s confusing. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: This is all getting rather undisciplined… The boat, the night, the sense of isolation and uncertainty… all these induce a losing of the concentration. --- We must not lose control. --- Tighten up. --- Now. --- Either you have lost the letter, or you never had it to lose in the first place, in which case the King never gave it to you, --- in which case he gave it to me, in which case I would have put it into my inside top pocket, in which case… --- … it would be… here. --- We mustn’t drop off like that again. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Now that we’ve found it, why were we looking for it? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: We thought it was lost. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Something else? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: No. What a shambles! --- We’re not getting anywhere. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Not even England. --- I don’ t believe in it anyway. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: England. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, you mean? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I mean I don’t believe it! --- I try to imagine us arriving, a little harbor perhaps… roads… --- No. --- We’re slipping off the map. --- We drift down time, clutching at straws. --- But what good’s a brick to a drowning man? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Don’t give up, we can’t be long now. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: We may as well be dead. --- Do you think death could possibly be a boat? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: No, no, no… Death is… not. --- Death isn’t. --- You get my meaning. --- Death is the ultimate negative. --- Not-being. --- You can’t not-be on a boat. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I’ve frequently not been on boats. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: No, no, no – What you’ve been is not on boats. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I wish I was dead. --- I could jump over the side. --- That would put a spoke in their wheel. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Unless they’re counting on it. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I shall remain on board. --- That’ll put a spoke in their wheel. --- All right! --- We don’t doubt, We don’t question, --- We perform. --- But a line must be drawn somewhere, and I would like to put it on record that I have absolutely no confidence in England. --- Thank you. And even if it’s real, it’ll just be another shambles. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I don’t see why. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: He won’t know what we’re playing at. --- – What are we going to say? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: We say – Your majesty, we have arrived! --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Oh oh oh yes. And who are you? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: We are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Never heard of you. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Well, we’re no one special – --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What’s your game? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: We’ve got our direction – --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: First I’ve heard of it – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Let me finish – We’ve come from Denmark. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: What do you want? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Nothing – we’re delivering Hamlet – --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Who’s he? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You’ve heard of him – --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Oh yes yes, I’ve heard of him all right and I want nothing to do with it. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: But – --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: You march in here without so much as a by-your-leave and expect me to take in every lunatic you try to pass off with a lot of unsubstantiated – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: We have a letter – --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Oh yes, yes, I see… I see… well, this seems to support your story such as it is – it is an exact command from the king of Denmark, for several different reasons, importing Denmark’s health and England’s too, that on the reading of this letter, without delay, I should have Hamlet’s head cut off –! --- But we’re his friends. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: How do you know that? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: From our young days brought up with him. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You only have their word for it. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: But that’s what we depend on. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Well, yes, and then again no. Let us keep things in proportion. --- Assume, if you like, that they’re going to kill him. --- Well, he is a man, he is mortal, death comes to us all, etcetera, and consequently he would have died anyway, hereafter --- And then again, what is so terrible about death? --- As Socrates so philosophically reminds us, since we don’t know what death is, it is illogical to fear it. --- It might be… very nice. --- Certainly it is a release from the burden of life, and, for the godly, a haven and a reward. --- All in all, I think we’d be well advised to leave well enough alone. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: But what’s the point? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Don’t apply logic. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: He’s done nothing to us. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Or justice. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: It’s awful. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Yes, but it could have been worse. --- I was beginning to think it was. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: The position as I see it, then. --- We, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, from our young days brought up with him, awakened by a man standing on his saddle, --- are summoned, and arrive, and are instructed to glean what afflicts him and draw him on to pleasures, such as a play, which unfortunately, as it turns out, --- is abandoned in some confusion owing to certain nuances outside our appreciation – which, among other causes, results in, among other effects, a high, not to say, homicidal, excitement in Hamlet, --- whom we, in consequence, are now escorting, for his own good, to England. --- Good. --- We’re on top of it now. [deep, mystical music and piano keying] --- ## GUILDENSTERN: [deep boom] Here we go again. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Yes, but what? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Out of the void, finally, a noise; --- Go and see what it is. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: I thought I heard a band. --- ## PLAYER: Aha! --- We're on the same boat then! --- Where are we going? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: We're travelling. --- ## PLAYER: Right, we're not there yet. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Are we all right for England? --- ## PLAYER: You look alright to me. --- I don't think England's very particular. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What are you doing here? --- ## PLAYER: Travelling. --- You surprised to see me? --- You've come out so very well so far. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: And you? --- ## PLAYER: In disfavor with the King. --- Our play offended him. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Well, yes. --- ## PLAYER: Well he, and him being a second husband too. --- Tactless, really. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Still, it was quite a good play, nevertheless. --- ## PLAYER: We were getting so good before they stopped us it was just getting interesting. --- Surprised to see me? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I knew it wasn’t the end. --- ## PLAYER: With everyone practically still on their feet. --- What do you make of it, so far? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: A tendency towards philosophical introspection is his chief characteristic if I may put it like that. --- It does not mean he is mad. --- It does not mean he's not mad. --- Very often, it does not mean anything at all. --- Which may or may not be a kind of madness. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: It really boils down to symptoms. Pregnant replies, mystic allusions, mistaken identities, arguing his father is his mother, that sort of thing; [Hamlet incoherently talking to himself] --- intimations of suicide, hints of claustrophobia not to say delusions of imprisonment; --- invocations of camels, chameleons, capons, whales, weasels, hawks, handsaws – amnesia, paranoia, myopia; --- stabbing his elders, abusing his parents, insulting his lover, and appearing hatless in public – knock-kneed, droop-stockinged and sighing like a love sick schoolboy, which at his age is coming on a bit strong. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: And talking to himself. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: And talking to himself. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Incidents! --- All we get is incidents! --- Dear God, is it too much to expect a little sustained action?! [loud, adventurous music] --- Pirates! --- They’ve gone. --- That was lucky. --- I’ve never thought quicker. --- Where’s Hamlet? --- ## PLAYER: Once more, alone. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What do you mean? --- Where is he? --- ## PLAYER: Gone. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Gone where? --- ## PLAYER: Yes, we were dead lucky there. --- If that’s the word I’m looking for. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Dead? --- ## PLAYER: Lucky. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Is he dead? --- ## PLAYER: Who knows? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Wait, he’s not coming back? --- ## PLAYER: Hardly. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: He’s dead then. --- He’s dead as far as we’re concerned. --- ## PLAYER: Or we are as far as he's concerned. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: But he can’t – we’re supposed to be – we have a letter – we’re on our way to England with a letter for the King – --- ## PLAYER: Well, that much seems certain. --- I congratulate you on the unambiguity of your situation. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: But you don’t understand – it contains – we’ve had our instructions – the whole thing’s pointless without him. --- ## PLAYER: Pirates could attack anyone. --- Just deliver the letter. --- They’ll send ambassadors from England to explain… --- ## GUILDENSTERN: You don't understand – the pirates left us home and high – dry and home – --- drome – The pirates left us high and dry! --- ## PLAYER: There there there… --- ## GUILDENSTERN: The whole thing is pointless without him… --- ## PLAYER: There there… --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Nothing will be resolved, we need Hamlet for our release! --- ## PLAYER: There, there! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What are we supposed to do? --- ## PLAYER: This... this. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Saved again. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Shut up! --- Do you think conversation will save us now? --- We’ve travelled too far, and our momentum has taken over: we move idly towards eternity, without hope of explanation or possibility of reprieve. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Be happy – what's the point of surviving if you won't even be happy. --- We’ll be all right. --- I suppose we just go on. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Go on, where? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: England. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: England! --- That’s a dead end. --- I never believed in it anyway. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Just deliver the letter, and that'll be that. --- Surely. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I don’t believe it – a shore, a harbor, say – and we get off and we stop someone and say – Where’s the King? --- – And he says, Oh, you follow that road there and take the first left and – I don’t believe any of it. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: It doesn’t seem very plausible. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: And even if we do come face to face, what do we say? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: We say – We’ve arrived! --- ## GUILDENSTERN: And who are you? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: We are Guildenstern and Rosencrantz. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Which is which? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Well, I’m – You’re – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: What’s it all about? --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Well, we were taking Hamlet – but then some pirates – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I don’t begin to understand. --- Who are all these people, what’s it got to do with me? --- You show up out of the blue with some cock-and-bull story – --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: We have a letter – --- ## GUILDENSTERN: A letter – yes – that’ s true. --- That’s something… a letter… “As England is Denmark’s faithful tributary … --- as love between them like the palm might flourish, etcetera… that on the knowing of these contents, without delay of any kind, --- should those bearers, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, put to sudden death" --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Where we went wrong was getting on a boat. --- We can move, of course, change direction, rattle about, but our movement is contained within a larger one which carries us along as inexorably as the wind and current… --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: They had it in for us, didn’t they? --- Right from the very beginning. --- Who’d have thought that we were so important? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: But why? --- Was it for this? --- Who are we that so much should converge on our little deaths? --- Who are we? --- ## PLAYER: You are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. --- That is enough. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: No – it is not enough. --- To be told so little – to such an end – and still, finally, to be denied an explanation – --- ## PLAYER: In our experience, most things end in death. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Your experience – Actors! --- I’m talking about death – and you’ve never experienced that. --- And you can't act it. --- You die a thousand casual deaths… but no blood runs cold anywhere. --- Because even as you do it you know that you will come back in a different hat. --- But no one gets up after death – there is no applause – there is only silence and some second-hand clothes, and that is – death – --- If we have a destiny, then so had he – and if this is ours, then that was his – and if there are no explanations for us, then let there be none for him – --- ## PLAYER: No no no --- no flattery, no flattery – just competence – --- You see, you see, it is the kind of death they do believe – it’s what's expected. --- And you thought I’d – cheated. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: Oh, very good! --- Took me in completely – didn’t he take you in completely – --- Encore! --- Encore! --- ## PLAYER: Deaths for all ages and occasions! Deaths by suspension, by convulsion, by consumption, by incision and execution, by malnutrition, and asphyxiation –! --- Climactic carnage, death by poison and by steel –! --- Double deaths by duel –! --- Show! [gong sounds] --- So, so too is the end – it’s commonplace - it’s commonplace: light goes with life, and in the winter of your years the dark comes early. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: That’s it, then, is it? --- The sun’s going down. --- Or the earth’s coming up, as the fashionable theory would have it. --- Not that it makes any difference. --- What was it all about? --- When did is begin? --- Couldn’t we just stay put? --- I mean nobody is going to come on and drag us off… We’re still young… fit… we’ve got years… We’ve done nothing wrong! --- We didn’t harm anyone. --- Did we? --- ## GUILDENSTERN: I can’t remember. --- ## ROSENCRANTZ: All right, then. --- I don’t care. --- I’ve had enough. --- To tell you the truth, I’m relieved. --- ## GUILDENSTERN: Our names shouted in a certain dawn… a message… a summons… There must have been a moment, somehwere at the beginning, where we could have said – no. --- Somehow we missed it. Rosen –? --- Guilden –? Oh well, we’ll know better next time. --- Now you see me, now you – --- ## PLAYER: Ah, now let me speak to the yet unknowing world how these things came to be: you shall hear --- of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts, of accidental judgements, casual slaughters, --- deaths by cunning and by forced cause, but in this upshot, purposes mistook falling on inventor’s heads: all this can I truly deliver. That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. --- Once upon a time you dressed so fine You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you? --- ## POLONIUS: People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall" You thought they were all kiddin' you. --- ## CLAUDIUS: You used to laugh about Everybody that was hangin' out --- ## ENSEMBLE: Now you don't talk so loud Now you don't seem so proud --- About having to be scrounging for your next meal. How does it feel How does it feel --- To be on your own With no direction home Like a complete unknown --- Like a rolling stone? How does it feel How does it feel --- To be on your own With no direction home Like a complete unknown --- Like a rolling stone? How does it feel

Syntax	Example	Reference
# Header	Header	基本排版
- Unordered List	Unordered List
1. Ordered List	Ordered List
- [ ] Todo List	Todo List
> Blockquote	Blockquote
Bold font	Bold font
Italics font	Italics font
~~Strikethrough~~	~~Strikethrough~~
19^th^	19^th
H~2~O	H₂O
++Inserted text++	Inserted text
==Marked text==	Marked text
[link text](https:// "title")	Link
![image alt](https:// "title")	Image
`Code`	`Code`	在筆記中貼入程式碼
```javascript var i = 0; ```	`var i = 0;`
:smile:		Emoji list
{%youtube youtube_id %}	Externals
$L^aT_eX$	L^aT_eX
:::info This is a alert area. :::	This is a alert area.